don't go wasting your emotion
by zedille
Summary: Peter has a few things he'd like to say. (XMDP crack / parody / meta / fixit where Peter shows up in New York to call out Erik & give Jean a pep talk.)


I wrote half of this the night I came back from seeing the movie, and then sat on it for a few more weeks, you know the drill.

\- Sophie Turner's acting sold the movie in theaters, but the plot makes less and less sense the more I think about it.  
\- You're REALLY going to try to make Jean the villain when Magneto is _right there?!  
_\- I knew they'd dropped the Erik-and-Peter fathers-and-families ball, but I was _very_ surprised to see it basically thrown at Jean instead. Much subtlety wow.  
\- Michael Fassbender acted his best out of what he got, but what he got was even more nonsense than what everyone else had, so what can you do?

I salute all the Srs writers trying to take XMDP seriously... this is not one of those fics!

* * *

It's a good thing Peter gets there when he does.

He looks at the scene in front of him contemplatively:

A white-haired woman, thin and well-dressed, standing on the second-floor landing next to —

Jean, floating in the air with an expression of unrestrained fury, her skin glowing red and her hair fanning out behind her, gesturing at —

Erik Lehnsherr, Magnetocrat of Genosha, one-and-a-half time presidential assassin, the simultaneous holder of People's Hottest World Leader and World's Worst Dressed awards, formerly known as Henryk Gurzsky, formerly known as Max Eisenhardt, never known as Peter's father, the once and future Magneto.

At least he's ditched the magenta.

Erik is wearing what looks awfully like a black bathrobe. It doesn't go with his helmet at all, which has seen better days — it's looking rather deformed and beat-up. For some reason, Erik is cross-eyed and squinting at something. Upon further examination — _HOLY SHIT_, one pointed corner of his helmet's cheek guard is poised ominously a millimeter away from his eyeball, ready to burrow in. Jean must be furious if she's descending to Magneto's own methods.

It really is a disturbing scene. Never mind PG-13, this isn't even PG-33.

For once, Peter hasn't shown up too late to the situation. Peter would have gotten here faster if he hadn't had to help tidy up the mess outside first. He's just barely in the nick of time — but that still counts.

So. Third time's the charm, and all that. Peter changes the song on his Walkman for a bit of atmosphere (some songs are too on the nose — _pity the child who knows his parents indeed_). Van Halen's "Right Now" comes on. Much better.

First things first. Erik's helmet is so misshapen that it can't be lifted directly off his head — Peter is afraid he'll put Erik's eye out if he does. So Peter carefully vibrates the helmet off of Erik's head (that… sounds unfortunately obscene, but then again, the helmet is a bit like a mental condom protecting against telepathy, isn't it?) He'll probably have a migraine, but better a migraine than his eye gouged out. Peter picks up the broken pieces of the helmet, as well as any other large pieces of metal that could potentially be weaponized (was that the stair banister?), and dumps them outside among the rest of the wreckage. Seriously, what did the New York subway system ever do to Erik?

He doesn't want anyone else involved in this conversation, so he picks up the woman from the second floor and drops her off outside. A sweep of the rest of the (well-decorated) house turns up a few other people, whom Peter moves outside as well. On second thought, he takes all of them and puts them all down several blocks from the house in question. He's not sure where these people came from, how they came to be involved in all this, or what they want with Jean, but he doubts it's anything good.

And all of a sudden, he's out of excuses for further procrastination. He runs a few more laps around the emptied-out front room of the house to psych himself up. He's not going to chicken out this time! He's going to do the thing!

Peter slows down and slips back in the usual flow of time. He coughs. Jean and Erik both turn to look at him incredulously. A moment later, Erik starts groping around his newly revealed head and its bad case of helmet hair.

"Hi, guys," says Peter brightly. "Could I have a moment?"

Jean reacts first. "Wait, _Peter_? What are you doing here? I thought you were in a coma — I thought _I_ put you in a coma."

"Oh, you know me. A little head trauma can't keep me down for long."

"I'm glad to see you're all right," says Jean.

"I heard you're having a rough patch."

Jean grimaces. "That's an understatement. This is the worst day of my life. Charles _lied_ to me! My father —"

"Oh." Peter winces. This is definitely a touchy subject for him, too. "I am so, so sorry. I'd be upset too. I mean, I am upset. _For you_. Because this isn't about me."

"You're right," snarls Erik, in a full-on Magneto voice. "This isn't about you. Now, if you'll excuse us, Jean and I have some unfinished business. You can come back later."

"NO!" Peter shouts. "I am not going to come back later! We're going to do this right now. I chickened out the last time I had the chance to talk to you while you were floating around in the air wearing your helmet and causing property damage, and look what happened then! I'm not waiting for another ten years. And I'm not letting you kill Jean, either!"

Jean relaxes out of her fighting stance. "Wait, Peter … is this the _conversation_? Are you finally ready to do it? Don't worry, I'll let you talk to Erik before I kill him. Emotional closure is good."

Of course Jean, like everyone else at the school, knows Erik is his father. (It helps that she's a telepath.) Peter hadn't exactly planned on having this conversation under these specific circumstances, but if it'll buy him some time, he'll take it.

He clears his throat, squares his shoulders, and opens his mouth. "Erik, I just wanted to tell you that you're — that I'm — that I —"

Erik, impatiently murderous, raises a disinterested eyebrow. Jean looks murderously impatient.

"— THAT I'M ASHAMED OF YOU!" Peter blurts out. He still can't do it.

"You came all this way here … to tell me that you're ashamed of me?" says Erik, raising his other eyebrow.

"Yes, I did. I just had to run downstate, so this wasn't very far at all. I used to run up to the school from Virginia all the time, you know. And someone had to tell you the truth!"

"The truth?"

"Erik Magneto Lehnsherr, you are displaying the emotional continuity of a toddler! Never mind me — you should be ashamed _of yourself_."

"A toddler?" says Erik blankly. "What are you even talking about?"

Peter points an accusing finger. "Don't try to lie to me! I saw this all in Cerebro with Charles. Yesterday, when Jean showed up in Genosha — you were totally going to adopt her as a replacement father, weren't you?"

Now both of them are staring at him. At least Jean's glowing effect has dimmed a bit. She's probably too confused to be angry.

"I know about Nina and what happened to her. So when Jean showed up — you were_ excited_ to hear that she had developed new powers and grown stronger, weren't you? You wanted her to show you. You wanted to know who she killed so you could celebrate it properly. You were just itching to bust out the helmet and launch Magneto's comeback tour."

"How do you know this?" says Erik defensively. Peter has struck a nerve.

"I saw this all in Cerebro. Charles showed me."

"If you were watching Jean's time in Genosha, then you also heard me say I've stopped killing people."

"_Right_," snaps Peter. "At least until you heard about Raven and decided to start it up again. Because that's definitely not what you're here to do."

Erik doesn't say anything.

"And I can't believe you're doing this in Raven's name!" continues Peter. "Didn't you try to kill her yourself back in the day? _Literally on international television_? You traumatized my little sister!"

"It was for the greater good," says Erik stiffly. "Though I admit I may have been somewhat mistaken at the time —"

"You're mistaken now! Killing Jean is the last thing she would want! Yes, yes, I'm sure she would have wanted to live, but she knew what she was doing. Raven died trying to reach out to Jean, to _help_ her, and if you ever loved her — and I sure hope you meant that figuratively or platonically, not sexually—"

"He did," says Jean dryly. "It's not how I want to think of Raven right now, either."

The mental image of Raven getting it on with Erik, while thoroughly disturbing, is at least better than the image of Raven dead, so Peter will still chalk this up as a win.

"Anyway," Peter says pointedly, "if you loved Raven, no matter how you loved her, you should be trying to help and support Jean now, like I am. You were ready to adopt her yesterday! Which isn't … great, exactly, but at least it's consistent with your existing brand. You know, I was so proud when I learned you'd saved those dudes from the military who showed up at Genosha. But today you just plowed right through those poor innocent bystanders outside. They're okay, by the way, no thanks to you. But make up your mind already. Do you care about collateral damage now, or not? Did you care about Mystique, or not? Do you care about Jean, or not?"

"I —" Erik begins.

"With how many circles you've gone around in over the twenty-four hours — you're like a magneto. I mean, a literal magneto. The tool. You really are such a _tool_."

"I came here to see justice done," says Erik dramatically — he's clearly warming up for a Magneto Speech — but Peter ignores him and turns to Jean instead.

"I'm sorry you had to hear all that. Anyway, I wanted to ask, when was the last time you ate?"

"What?" says Jean. Peter notes with some relief that she's stopped floating, at least.

"I don't mean to invalidate your anger — Charles and Hank explained what happened, and you definitely have the right to feel angry that your father abandoned you and disregarded the fact of your existence and dumped you on Charles and went off to live in the middle of nowhere instead in an ill-advised attempt to move on, a fact which has now come back to haunt him" — Peter pauses for breath — "but, seriously, when was the last time you ate anything?"

"I… had some whiskey at a bar? That was before I came here."

"I think you might have low blood sugar. I know I always get cranky when I haven't eaten enough recently. Look, have a Twinkie."

Peter zips upstairs and offers her the last three Twinkies from his uniform pockets; Jean automatically takes them. At Peter's expectant look, she unwraps one and eats it.

"Can I get you anything else? Actually, just give me a moment and I'll be right back —"

New York City is the food capital of the world, after all. Running as quickly as he can (he has to get back before Jean and Erik start fighting again), he zips around the neighborhood and picks up two prepackaged roast beef sandwiches, a bag of chips, a few bananas and an apple, another case of Twinkies, and a few bottles of soda.

Once he gets back to the brownstone, and still in quicktime, he drags a table and two chairs into the foyer, arranges all of the food nicely on it, and pulls out a chair for Jean. Then he slips back into regular time. Neither Jean or Erik are surprised by his reappearance: Jean barely blinks an eye at his reappearance, and Erik appears to be trying to reassemble his helmet from the dust Peter reduced it to. (Honestly, Peter is impressed that Erik hasn't made any escape attempts, though apparently he's realized that between a telepath and a mutant with super-speed, he wouldn't get very far. This is the most sense that Erik has shown all day.)

"Here," Peter says, gesturing at the table. "Eat. You'll feel better."

Jean sits down and starts working methodically through the sandwiches. Peter eats a Twinkie or five, to be companionable, and then clears his throat.

"So, no hard feelings about the head injury at all. My head's hard enough, you know? Anyway, I want to let you know, I'm here to support you because I'm your teammate and your friend. And because I know a bit about what it's like to have the truth about your father kept from you. I used to think my father was my mom's husband, because that's how most families work, but it was just my mom letting me think that for years and years, even after Arnold died. Turns out my actual father was some asshole my mom slept with a few times." He glances nervously over at Magneto, who's standing in the corner, in both the literal and metaphorical meanings of the phrase. "I mean, not that the degree of secrecy is really the same, since my mom told me about it eventually, but. I can empathize. Sometimes your dad is just a terrible person, and you're honestly better off without him."

Jean has finished the sandwiches and is now working on the apple.

"The things our fathers do — that's on them. It's not on us. I'm sure Charles would say that he's a good person, but even if he's a good person the rest of the time, or most of the time, it doesn't matter. It doesn't change the fact that he's done these terrible things and he can't undo them. And your forgiveness won't change that either. It's not our responsibility to redeem them with our forgiveness."

"Peter," says Jean, "are you talking about you or me here?"

"Oh!" says Peter awkwardly. "Sorry. I didn't mean to get off-topic and make this about me. I came here for you."

"Thanks. I do appreciate you coming all this way. It doesn't change the fact that I'm a monster."

Things are worse than Peter thought. "No, you're not!" he says indignantly. "You know who _is_ a monster?"

Jean stares at him. "I have no idea where you're going with this."

"That guy!" says Peter, pointing at Magneto. "He's a monster. That's what everyone, especially Mom, said. But look at him now! He's got great PR. They literally gave him a country after he was last seen messing around with the magnetic fields of the whole planet! So you just have to let Charles work his magic — nowhere near your head, obviously, I don't approve of Charles' methods of repressing trauma — but he's got money and that Old Rich White Man influence. You'll be fine. Everything will blow over."

"But I killed someone," says Jean flatly. "I killed Raven. I was going to kill Erik."

"Bah! Raven was an accident — tragic and regrettable, but still an accident. And you definitely had cause on the latter. I've had days when _I_ wanted to kill him. Look how many people he's killed, entirely on purpose, and with increasingly spurious reasons as to why! You haven't done anything he hasn't done."

Jean looks contemplative. Peter pushes his advantage. "You know what else you haven't done? You've never knocked up a woman while you were on the run for assassinating the President, and then abandoned her and her twin children after you "accidentally" blew up her house and killed her husband."

"That's … true," says Jean slowly.

"Also!" Peter says. "I have some experience with strangers showing up and trying to take advantage of your powers to further their uncertain ends. And like, I'm not saying that you can't go with these people if you don't want to. I've been there — done that, got the whole new uniform to show. But maybe you should figure out what their motives actually are. Ask some questions, is all. Because _I_ didn't ask enough questions when the Prof came by in '73, and I ended up jailbreaking Magneto. Look how that's turned out. Sometimes you really have to wonder what Charles was thinking, am I right?"

Jean nods. Time for Peter to wrap it all up.

"I understand that you're under a lot of stress right now, which is valid, but things are also not as bad as you think. You are not alone! You have friends who are here to support you. (Scott sends his love, by the way — he's outside but he's a little tied up.) You have family, exclusive of your biological father! Or Charles. There are plenty of other non-telepathic psychologists out there who can help you through your grief and all of your feelings. You have a choice. You don't _have_ to go with these random people. Seriously, where did they come from?"

"They're aliens. There was a whole speech and presentation routine earlier."

"ALIENS?! Why is everyone so calm about this? It's not enough that we're doing space missions now but also — aliens? Really? Yeah, I don't have anything else to say. I've got nothing. I'm out. I've said what I came here to say and I'll give you some space now. Ha ha, pun not intended."

Peter starts clearing up the food in preparation to leave before he remembers the other reason he came here. "Wait, sorry, I'll be taking Erik with me. I do have some unfinished business, after all. You can have him back after my mother's done with him."

"That's fair," says Jean, and then: "… Actually, can I come with you? Your mother must have a lot to say. I want to see this."

"Oh yeah, it's definitely going to be a show. You should hear Mom once she gets going about child support."

"_Wait_," says Erik, in tones of slowly dawning horror. "This whole time — you were talking about _me_?!"

* * *

Title from ABBA; the lyric quoted is from Pity the Child from Chess.

This is, in some ways, a follow-up to my XMA-era crack/metafic _hold your head up_. Spot the self-parody!

I do have another, more comprehensive crackfic/parody/meta/fixit in the works. In the meantime, let me know what you thought! Am I the only person who thought Erik's black coat thing in the New York scene looked like a bathrobe?


End file.
